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The secret to sky-high sandcastle success

Dale Andrews will spend up to 12 hours crouched in the sand on Burlington Beach on a practice day, raking, carving and smoothing. He can start his day at 5:30 a.m. Passersby, marvelling at the temporary art, offer lunch, hugs and express awe. But at the end of the day, once Andrews has soaked up the view of his sand sculpture and snapped a few pics, he walks away and doesn’t think about its inevitable fate. “Don’t look back,” he says.

Andrews, who has won sand sculpture competition after sand sculpture competition, shared his tips to create the kind of sandcastle you won’t want to leave behind. You might want to try them at this epic sandcastle competition Sunday, taking place at Ashbridge's Bay.

Sand

Andrews, a championship-winning sand sculptor, says he clears the area he wants to work on of its dry sand (about six inches deep) until he gets to the solid sand. “The sand on the top is all dry and if you build on a dry base, it can fall apart on you,” Andrews says, noting he used a rake to get down to the “solid stuff.”

Bottomless bucket

Bottomless buckets are key to avoid crumbling. Andrews says he uses buckets from Home Depot or Lowes and cuts the bottoms off, so that when he pulls them off the pile of sand, there isn’t suction to tear the sand apart. He keeps the buckets on as he’s layering and pulls them off one by one at the end. There is still a bit of suction created from the sides, so Andrews says it’s important to tap the sides before pulling it off. “You break the seal between the sand and the bucket,” Andrews says. He uses the trowel, a tool for finishing drywall or digging, to lightly tap the sides of the buckets before removing them. He also uses the trowel for carving.

Mix

“Everything is sand and water — it’s all about how you compact it,” Andrews says. Pack three to four inches of sand at the bottom of the bucket and dump water in it while it’s turned over, throwing sand in through the top (which would alternatively be the bottom, but isn’t since you’ve removed it), Andrews says. “All the water from the bottom part will drain properly and all the sand will stick together, so what you then have is what you call a bucket form.” Once your first turned-over bottomless bucket is full of wet sand, stick another slightly smaller one on top without removing the bucket, and repeat. When you’re making an epic sandcastle, it’s best to carve from what you have. So, “like a wedding cake,” you have to layer the buckets of wet sand.

Carving

“Now that the sand is sitting there as a block, you’re ready to start carving things out,” says Andrews, who uses a drywall trowel to do most of the castle’s carving. For the more intricate stuff, like arched windows, he uses a spoon and a thin kitchen spatula.

Patterns

Andrews created a brick pattern for the three-foot-high castle he built on Burlington Beach Wednesday, using a plastic fork from which he’d removed the two middle prongs. “You can do a brick pattern in a couple minutes and it looks amazing.” Andrews added that you can make patterns with almost anything, including spoons. “When you draw those patterns, you use a straw and you blow through the straw to get rid of any of the excess little particles that are left on the pattern and that cleans it all up,” Andrews says. After that, he uses a feather duster to smooth it over.

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The castle Andrews built Wednesday included an arch a foot and a half tall. He created it by building around a pylon that he pulled out to leave a hole, and carved out the sides. You can also create one by joining two towers, which Andrews did, one of three feet and the other of two. There are all sorts of things you can do and Andrews says to look up pictures of other sand sculptures and experiment. On Wednesday, Andrews decided to build doors and a drawbridge gate. “If you take yourself too seriously, that can kind of ruin things for you,” Andrews says, offering a word of advice: “Just go out and have fun.”

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